Timeline

[eXterminator]

How would i make a time line in games (RPG's? I've got a complete graphics, battle, messages and other stuff ready, but i don't know how to make the timing. Insert a story in other words...

[Sastraxi]

Comepletely up to you. In Zelda, they way they did it sucked. You had to wait for 5 minutes while a boring story showed and music played. The time I played it I went out and got a tomato sandwich in the time.. you'd better do it in an interesting way, like hint at it though people whispering and see things happen yourself, that way the person feels more immersed in the story.

However if you have no creativity to make a storyline than you'll have to start thinking

[SteveCRM]

I like how you can hear it if you want or can skip it....I hate listening to the same story about 5 times...

and sastraxi: tomato sandwish ?

[eXterminator]

I mean, how do i program the story into the game?

[Sastraxi]

It's like a BLT but without the lettuce, it's very nice actually.

[eXterminator]

I could use an example of it

[Sastraxi]

Well you can't just say that. What do you want to do?

[Jotaf98]

Personaly, I think that you should either use a full-motion cinematic or an in-game cinematic (if the player interacts or not it's up to you too)

[eXterminator]

i cant use cut-scenes for everything, any anywhay, how would i know when to show them. How do i know when someone should say something and what, that what i need help with.

[Sastraxi]

Study a few other RPGs, such as Chrono Trigger (great game that), the Final Fantasies, etc. They should give you some ideas. What I would do is this:

For really emotional scenes don't let the user control the character(s). For non-emotional ones, make sure the user has a linear path to follow to get to their goal. A good way of showing the user something too is to have them overhear conversations, etc.

Here are some examples.

"The village is burning! Hurry you must help us!"
In this case, you might let the character run to the village themselves.
The party sees an old friend dying after the blazing inferno.
Since this is a semi-emotional scene, you could make the character go to the person on his own. Then when they die, they could make some sort of "pledge" to the dead character to avenge their death. This is a good way of bringing in Side Quests.
On their side quest, the heroes are knocked out. They awake beside their captors who are talking.
You could do some different things here, such as have a mini-game to knock out the captors, or something like them revealing the plot. It's really up to you.

If you need any more help ask!

[Jotaf98]

As with any basic RPG you need to use scripts or at least a trigger system

[Sastraxi]

Is that not implied?

[Jotaf98]

Waddayamean, "is that not implied"?

[eXterminator]

So, how to i code all this stuff? How do I use scripts?

[Jotaf98]

Huh well, perhaps scripts are a bit too advanced to you (it took me almost 2 weeks to make a decent one ). You should use triggers. A trigger is a group of conditions and actions - every second or so, loop trough all the triggers, and for each trigger, loop trough all the conditions and check if they're all true. If they are, loop trough all the actions and execute them. Here's a little example of a simple quest, made with triggers:

Trigger 1
Conditions:
-Player touches character "Merlin"
-Player doesn't have item "Dragon Ball Spell".
-Player doesn't have item "Dragon Orb".
Actions:
-Show message - "Hi! I can teach you the Dragon Ball Spell, but first you must bring the Dragon Orb to me."

Trigger 2
Conditions:
-Player touches character "Merlin"
-Player doesn't have item "Dragon Ball Spell".
-Player has item "Dragon Orb".
Actions:
-Show message - "Thank you! Here's the Dragon Ball Spell."
-Give item "Dragon Ball Spell" to the player.
-Take item "Dragon Orb" from the player.

Trigger 3
Conditions:
-Player touches character "Merlin"
-Player has item "Dragon Ball Spell".
Actions:
-Show message - "Hi again! How's the Dragon Ball Spell going?"

[eXterminator]

wow, gotta be a lot of coding . Thanks! Now i got a basic idea of how this works. Now i can finish my rpg

[vshammas]

check out the Exile series (now renamed to Avernum) by spiderweb software (www.avernum.com), it's a very cool rpg with that sort of system. you might pick up a few decent techniques in that game.

[Jotaf98]

Yeah I have that RPG too

Have a look at Starcraft for example, it's not an RPG but it has an excellent system of triggers - if you get it, read the Help on triggers, it should give you a lot of ideas

[vshammas]

exile: the greatest rpg in the world

[Jotaf98]

Yeah it's good, it just lacks some animation